The Castilla laboratory studies the mechanism of leukemia development using mouse models. To this end, researchers in the Castilla Lab have developed sophisticated mouse models for acute myeloid leukemia to study the mechanisms dictating leukemia development, including conditional knockins.  These are utilized with tissue specific and inducible Cre transgenic mice to better understand the function of driver-mutations in a cell type specific manner. Researchers also utilize and patient derived xenografts to study clonal complexity of patient AML blasts and therapeutic efficacy in vivo.